Communication systems involve a near-end system and a far-end system, which communicate over a medium. For example, a near-end system may detect sound produced by one or more sound sources at the near-end location and transmit this detected sound as an uplink signal to a far-end system at another location.
Ideally, the near-end system only detects the sound from an intended sound source (e.g., a near-end user). However, in many scenarios, in particular two-way communication systems, the detected sound at the near-end may include, in addition to sound from the intended sound source, the far-end sound, which is received from a downlink signal and played-back by the near-end system through a speaker (i.e., acoustic echo). To maintain an effective communication system, this acoustic echo needs to be controlled such that the users of such a communication system may clearly understand their distant counterpart.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.